Re: Best way of compiling applications to run on older linux distros

[Tom Quarendon <tom dot quarendon at teamwpc dot co dot uk>]

> Right.  Like most systems, it's backwards compatible but not forwards.
> Forwards compatibility is in general impossible since APIs are added
> from time to time.

But is works just fine on Windows. You compile specifying the os level 
you're targetting and all later APIs are #ifdeffed out so you can't use 
them. The resulting executable then works quite happily on the older 
version of the OS. All of the OS entry points have fixed IDs in the run 
time library, so there's no API compatibility, or ABI compatibility 
issues, only semantic ones, and generally they're pretty careful about that.

The issue we're having on linux seems to be to do with the dynamic 
loading hash table incompatbility, and the level of libstdc++ shared object.

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